This Here Now (it's where we touch down)
by mosylu
Summary: With the war over, Jyn knows their time serving the Rebellion-turned-New-Republic is over, too. It's time to move on and do something for themselves. She's not too sure about this farming gig. But as long as Cassian's there, she's there.


(A/N): Title from from "Incomplete" by James Bay, for my musical prompts series on Tumblr. Prompted by thezelbinion

* * *

Jyn hustled up the gangplank, teeth chattering. "I should have put the cover on the landspeeder," she said, stripping her damp jacket and soggy gloves off and tossing them on a nearby bench. She growled under her breath when she realized the caf machine was turned off and the pot empty. She slapped the switch with numb fingers, too impatient to clean out the old powder and swap new in. The brew would taste like crap, but it would be hot, and that was the important part.

"I told you that," K-2 said.

"I didn't think it would be that cold. The sun was shining when I left." She blew on her fingers and then stuffed them into her armpits. They began to tingle painfully. "It's spring on this planet, isn't it?"

"I gave you the ambient temperature and calculated wind chill."

"Well, it feels like colder." She switched out the pot for a mug.

"You didn't listen to me."

She glared at him. "Did you turn off this caf pot?"

"It was wasting energy."

"I'll waste _you_ ," she threatened vaguely and insincerely.

"Also, whenever you leave the caf pot on for more than three hours, you call it disgusting sludge and discard it."

She couldn't deny that. With longing, she watched the caf begin to piss down into the mug. When it was full, she switched it out with the pot and took a gulp that scalded her mouth.

Yep. Liquid crap. She dumped sweetener in until it didn't make her want to gag and took another deep gulp. "Mmmmnnnnn," she groaned as heat began to work its way through her body.

She took the mug to the cockpit and slouched down in the front seat, bracing her boots against the console. A faint spatter of rain began to speckle the windshield. She looked through it to the damp, green, rumpled-looking landscape.

Their land.

When she'd won it in a sabacc game with an ambassador's flunky nearly a year ago, she'd meant to sell it off. But Cassian had said, "Can't hurt to take a few days and have a look," in a voice that sounded so terribly casual she'd known he really wanted to see it.

She'd laughed. "What, are we going to be farmers?"

He'd shrugged.

 _"Cassian,"_ she'd said, astonished.

"I have a few days. I'll go."

She'd gone with him - of course she had. The land was hilly, the soil cruddy and rock-studded, and a good ten percent of the promised three hundred-ish acres was beach, all sand and rocks and little pools full of scuttling things, of no use to farmers whatsoever.

She'd studied Cassian's face as he looked around and thought, _Well, it looks like we're farmers now._

He'd said, "We don't have to."

She knew full well that she was one of the only things he'd ever permitted himself to want. Damned if she was going to keep him from one of the others.

She'd said, "You're bored stupid with reporting to New Republic politicos and mopping up Imperial dregs, and so am I. It's time to cash out."

It had taken several months for them to get their affairs enough in order to finally submit their resignations. That whole time, she'd remained uncertain. What were they thinking? They were a pair of vagabonds, used to hopping from system to system, eating military rations, living out of go-bags. They were rootless and had been for years. What were they thinking, chucking it to be farmers?

Then she would look at her husband, reading through some agricultural periodical with the same zeal he usually dedicated to mission prep - taking kriffing _notes_ , Force help him - and she'd thought, _He wants this. And I'm sick of mopping up. Unless we decide to turn smuggler or something, we'll have to settle somewhere._

She'd worried, too, that it would bring back memories of Lah'mu too strongly for her to handle. And in some ways it did; the green and the rain, the hills on one side and the sea on the other.

But the memories it dredged up weren't the last ones, but the ones that had come before. Trailing after her father as he tried to fix the stubborn droids. Pulling weeds with her mother, getting muddy up to her wrists. The warmly-lit kitchen as they ate together and listened to the wind shriek outside.

Not near so bad as she'd feared.

A neat figure, bundled in a thick jacket and fuzzy hood, moved into her view. He crouched to check something on the ground, holding some instrument up to the thin, watery light.

K-2 settled into the seat next to her, not even nagging her to remove her boots from the console. He was looking at Cassian too.

"I calculate a seventy-four percent chance that you will both starve in a year," he said.

"Seems low," Jyn said. "What about you?"

"I'll bury your emaciated bodies and make my way back to civilization."

She snorted and slurped up more second-brew caf. "You don't have to be here," she said.

"Where would I go?" K-2 said.

She rolled her head on the headrest to study him. He would be a help on the farm, Cassian had said. He could communicate with the computers and the farmhand droids. He -

"Stop trying to convince me that we should bring your best friend with us," Jyn had said. "Where else would he go?"

Kay was still looking out at Cassian. If he'd been human, Jyn was quite sure she would have recognized the look on his face.

She drained the last of her terrible, terrible caf and got to her feet. There were smears of mud on the console from her boots. Kay tutted. She curled her lip at him.

She went into the back and swapped out the old caf powder for new, filling up two mugs this time. "Don't turn off the pot," she hollered up into the cockpit. "We're coming right back in!"

His voice floated down. "I do not like to waste energy."

"We're coming _right_ back in," she repeated. Vaguely she considered pulling out dinner things, but for all she knew, Cassian had plans. He was the cook, not her. Although she might have to learn a few dishes. Be a proper farmer's wife.

She snorted to herself. She was happy to let Cassian cook. She would get up early and milk the boofs. Ride the perimeter. (In a landspeeder with a cover.) Pull weeds. Check the south forty. (Did they actually have a south forty?) Do farmer-y things.

She tested her jacket and gloves, found them still damp, and grabbed a sweater of Cassian's. It bagged around her and she had to roll up the sleeves, but it smelled good and it was warm. Holding one steaming mug in either hand, she went out into the wind and the mizzle.

His head was bent over some soil that he rubbed between his fingers. Tiny raindrops sparkled on the fluff of his hood and the strands of his hair. Her steps were silent on the mud, but all the same, he looked up when she came near, reaching one hand up for a mug. She surrendered it and wrapped her other hand around her own, shrugging until the rolled-up ends of his sweater slid obligingly over her knuckles.

"How is the perimeter?" he asked.

"Oh, you know," she said. "Still there. I checked all the fence sensors. They're still up from the last time. Good sign."

He nodded. "Where are your gloves?"

"Soggy and useless," she said.

"You should have - "

"Put the cover on the landspeeder, I know. What are you doing out here?"

"Mmmm. Checking a few things. I've been thinking."

"Cassian Andor, if you want to move the spot for the house _again_ \- "

"No, no, it's good," he said, nodding at the large square marked out with string and posts and fluttering flags. "That's the best place. Definitely."

He'd better not change it again, she thought darkly. Bodhi and Chirrut and Baze were all arriving tomorrow with the house-fabber. It would "print" out a basic house in duracrete and plasteel, with spots for windows and doors, which were also coming. It could also do outbuildings. They only had it for a week and then it had to go back to the rental place two moons over, so he'd better not get any bright ideas.

"No, I was thinking about our crops."

For this first, experimental year, they'd settled on a mix of legumes and grains and root vegetables, some of which would go to feed them and some of which would be sold in the nearby town. Crates of seeds slept in the cargo hold of the ship behind them. She stuck her nose into her mug, sniffing up steam to thaw her sinuses. "What about them?"

"The pH of the soil," he said. "It's perfect for tessah right here. We can plant it in the summer."

She made a face. "That stuff? No." The grain had been a staple during a few of the leaner times in the Rebellion. It certainly grew easily and sturdily, but she'd eaten tessah bread and tessah mush and roasted tessah and no matter what, you tried to swallow it as swiftly as possible, to get the taste off your tongue.

"We can feed it to the boofs. And in liquid form, apparently it's pretty good."

She frowned at him, and then her brows went up. "You want us to have a brewery?"

He shrugged. "One field. Give it a try."

She shook her head. "Sure, why not," she said. "It'll give us easy access to alcohol, anyway."

He smiled up at her. His hair stuck damply to his forehead. It still had grey streaks here and there, but the lines around his mouth and eyes had softened up just in the month since they'd left the core.

She found herself smiling back, love jolting through her chest. It was a sensation she'd more or less gotten used to.

With a grunt, he got to his feet and put his arm around her waist, pulling her into his warm, solid side. She hooked her fingers into his back belt loop and tucked her shoulder under his arm.

They looked out at the land. Their land. Rocky and defiant, rain-sodden, sullen. Probably more trouble than it was worth, all told.

Jyn could almost feel the roots striking down out of the soles of her feet.

"Kay gives us a seventy-four percent chance of starving to death in a year," she remarked.

"Hmmm," Cassian said, drinking his caf. "Seems low."

FINIS


End file.
